Post navigation

Shelling Out Sweeteners

An invoice from oil services company, OSSL, addressed to Shell and dated August 24, 2012, for an alleged drop-off of alcohol to gardaí in Mayo and Athlone in December 2007; and gardaí in a stand-off with protesters at Pollathomas Pier on June 11, 2007

You’ll recall the small oil services company, OSSL.

It has claimed it sourced and distributed sweeteners – including tennis courts, television sets and even school fees – to residents and gardaí in Rossport, Co. Mayo, home of the controversial Corrib Gas project, from 2004 until 2010, for Shell.

OSSL – managed by Desmond Kane, from Glasgow, and Neil Rooney, from Belfast – has alleged one such “accommodation service” for Shell included the delivery of €35,000 worth of alcohol to Belmullet Garda Station and Athlone, on behalf of Shell in December 2007.

This alleged delivery would have taken place just months after a serious clash between protesters and gardaí in Pollathomas Pier, Co Mayo on June 11, 2007, which left 20 civilians and two gardaí injured and which, OSSL claims, saw Neil Rooney, of OSSL, be placed under pressure by former CEO of Shell Ireland Terry Nolan to change a statement he had prepared for GSOC.

It was alleged Mr Rooney, in his statement, heard Superintendent Joe Gannon say: “I’m going to drive these fuckers into the sea”, in reference to the protesters at Pollathomas Pier. OSSL has alleged Mr Nolan told him “our man [Supt Gannon] had to be protected at all costs”.

In 2009, GSOC recommended that disciplinary action be taken against a senior garda in relation to the handling of the Pollathomas Pier protest but former Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy didn’t carry this out.

OSSL didn’t invoice Shell for this alleged alcohol drop in 2007 until August 24, 2012 – 22 days after it had reached a settlement with Shell and agreed to discontinue High Court proceedings [After their contract ended, OSSL alleged that, under instruction, invoices were falsified and that excessive tax had been withheld on invoices].

The €43,634.25 invoice contains the names of three senior gardaí – none of whom have taken any action against OSSL – and was first published on John Donovan’s Royal Dutch Shell website in March 2013.

Veteran journalist Ed Vulliamy wrote about the alleged alcohol drop at Belmullet in The Observer newspaper in August 2013.

Mr Vulliamy wrote that, while unloading the alcohol in December 2007, Supt John Gilligan, of Belmullet Garda Station at the time, allegedly said: “it’s lucky these walls are high”, in reference to the protesters in the area.

Several days after Mr Vulliamy’s article appeared in The Observer, Shell released a statement, saying, among other things, that:

”Shell E&P Ireland Limited (SEPIL) unequivocally rejects OSSL’s allegations regarding delivery at any time of alcohol to An Garda Síochána.”

“No evidence of the purchase or delivery of alcohol to garda stations, nor of any misconduct of garda members, has been found as a result of the investigation.”

The report added:

“These complaints and allegations have been made public and had the potential to undermine public confidence in the Garda Síochána, as well as affect the reputation of others. We hope that publicly explaining the proportionate, fair and independent investigation of this matter will promote confidence of members of the public and of the Garda Síochána in police oversight in this country.”

OSSL released a statement in response to GSOC’s report, stating Mr Kane and Mr Rooney met with GSOC on December 12, 2013 and that their statements – that were previously written down by a Mayo-based superintendent in a hotel in Tallaght, Dublin, in mid-2013, and signed by the two men – were ripped up in front of them while a garda said they were “shit”.

Further to this, last Wednesday, John Donovan, of the Royal Dutch Shell Plc website, contacted GSOC about material that had come into his possession since GSOC’s investigation in 2014.

In his email to GSOC last week, Mr Donovan drew attention to the invoice that OSSL drew up in August 2012.

He wrote:

“If the invoice is fictitious and the related OSSL allegations false, OSSL directors would by now have been arrested and charged for forging a VAT invoice and using it in an attempt to blackmail its former client, Shell EP Ireland.”

His email also contained an audio file of a 42-minute secretly recorded consultation between senior lawyer Mr Marc Fitzgibbon, of Dublin solicitors Lavelle, and Des Kane and Neil Rooney, of OSSL – a recording OSSL subsequently gave to John Donovan.

Attached was a series of emails between Mr Kane and Mr Fitzgibbon which were sent back and forth after the recorded meeting.

Mr Donovan’s email to GSOC also contained a letter, dated October 21, 2014, from Mr Fitzgibbon to Mr Kane, his client, after Mr Donovan notified Mr Fitzgibbon, in an email dated October 18, 2014, that his meeting with Mr Kane and Mr Rooney was secretly recorded [Mr Donovan had sent Mr Fitzgibbon extracts from the recording and sent a copy of the email to Shell’s company secretary, Michiel Brandjes – in order to give them the opportunity to take action to stop Mr Donovan from handing the material to the authorities].

In Mr Fitzgibbon’s letter to Mr Kane, Mr Fitzgibbon tells Mr Kane that he has received two requests from Shell for a conference call with Shell staff, including Michael Crothers, the CEO of Irish Shell.

On November 4, 2014, Mr Donovan sent an email to Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald. It included the audio recording and a full transcript of the meeting between Marc Fitzgerald, Des Kane and Neil Rooney.

On March 9, 2015, Mr Donovan received a reply from Minister Fitzgerald, in which her private secretary Chris Quattrociocchi stated:

“The Minister has directed me to point out the recent Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) Report of its investigation into these allegations. That Report, as you are no doubt aware, found no evidence of the purchase or delivery of alcohol to Garda stations, nor any misconduct of Garda members.”

“The Minister considers, therefore, that the matter is now closed and will not be entering into any further correspondence in relation to this.”

On Thursday last, GSOC confirmed to Mr Donovan in writing that it is looking at the material.

So what of this recorded meeting which took place in Dublin, in July 2014?

The main subject discussed is the alcohol that was allegedly given to gardaí.

In it, Mr Kane repeatedly seeks Mr Fitzgibbon’s confirmation that ‘the police alcohol’ was spoken about at several key meetings with senior figures at Shell before OSSL issued the invoice.

Mr Kane repeatedly says he needs ‘back-up’ or confirmation of these conversations to prove to Shell’s company secretary, Michiel Brandjes, ‘the culture of what they were being asked to do by Shell’.

He also says he and Mr Rooney want to take lie detector tests as, he claims, they’re seen as liars in the Irish media and public.

There is also considerable discussion over whether or not ‘the police alcohol’ was part of the full and final settlement agreed on August 2, 2012, with Mr Kane claiming it wasn’t and alleging that he was waiting on instructions from Shell as to how it should invoiced, stating that previous gifts of alcohol to gardai were invoiced as boots and hats.

Mr Fitzgibbon impresses upon Mr Kane that he has to check his notes to recall the context of how ‘the police alcohol’ was talked about in those conversations.

In the recorded meeting, Mr Kane repeats the allegation that OSSL lost its contract with Shell because of OSSL’s refusal to change their statement regarding Supt Joe Gannon, and that one resident was given sweeteners worth up to almost €900,000.

The meeting begins with Mr Kane explaining that he attended the Shell AGM in May 2014 in the Hague, where he requested another meeting with a Shell representative and that he was told this would only be possible if evidence was produced to support Mr Kane’s allegations.

Following is a transcript of the conversation between Marc Fitzgibbon, of Dublin solicitors Lavelle, and Des Kane and Neil Rooney, of OSSL

Fitzgibbon: “How’s life?”

Kane: “Okay. Thanks for seeing us so quickly.”

Fitzgibbon: “I don’t really need to have to ask for an update because you keep me informed in the emails.”

Kane: “I know… there’s 7,000 emails you’ve had from me.”

Fitzgibbon: “I’m sure… I get an overview from the emails that you’re still..”

Kane: “Okay.”

Fitzgibbon: “That you’re still at it with them [Shell]”

Kane: “Oh yeah yeah, yeah. We’re here to ask you a straight forward enough question but, first of all, a little bit of background. On the 20th of May [2014], we addressed, or I addressed, the [Shell] AGM again in Den Hague in Holland.”

Fitzgibbon: “Yeah.”

Rooney: “A little bit of humour.”

Fitzgibbon: “So, this is the AGM of Shell?”

Kane: “At Shell”

Fitzgibbon: “Okay.”

Kane: “And there was a new CEO from the last time around.”

Fitzgibbon: “So you were on the floor and you stood up.”

Kane: “Yeah it was broadcast to 200,000 people worldwide on the webcam.”

Fitzgibbon: “Yeah… So what did you say?”

Kane: “We said there were outstanding matters on the Corrib Gas development and that we demanded a meeting and we’ve been asked to produce evidence of what we are saying but you have to show willing in complying with us in order to see the evidence and come with us and meet the evidence and it’s not just as straightforward as that. Anyways, the outcome of that was that the CEO said, ‘Yes I know about you, I know all about you, thanks thanks for coming’.”

Fitzgibbon: “At the meeting?”

Kane: “At the meeting. ‘Setting aside everything that has gone before, including a commercial decision we took, we will meet again and we will review any new evidence you want to put on the table with regards to what you are saying. Is that suffice?’ I said that is suffice for today’s purposes, if we can get confirmation of a meeting before I leave the building and the chairman interrupted – Jorma Ollila was his name – and he said, ‘Mr Kane, you’ve had an answer. We don’t want you back here next year. We want a happy resolution to this’. This is all in a podcast, it’s all in writing, all in words.”

Fitzgibbon: “Obviously they were using this kind of language.”

Kane: Yeah. And ‘A meeting will be fixed’. So we held back, after the AGM, and we spoke with a man called Michiel Brandjes who is the corporate director [of Shell] he is the man he is the man who is always there, he’s is the Company Secretary for the whole world.”

Fitzgibbon: “Was this in Holland?”

Kane: “In Holland, yeah. So he came and had tea and cakes with us afterwards and he said, ‘Okay you’ve got a meeting’. He said, ‘You’ll be advised’ and he said, ‘What ever more you’ve got to tell us, tell us, we want to put this to bed’. So the important words there were ‘setting aside anything that’s gone before’ by way of the August the 2nd last year’s meeting, August 2nd 2012 [date of settlement]. Right. So the next thing that Brandjes told us was, ‘If we can get your confirmation and some sort of backup to the fact that we instructed the alcohol and that we knew about the alcohol, prior to the invoice that you raised for 43,000’ – he knew all about it, this is the man that’s at the top of a whole big company – ‘so we have something to start from’, he said, because Ireland are saying maybe rightly, and maybe wrongly, that they don’t know about the alcohol’. That’s the problem. Now you were in the room in London with us, at great expense, when I, the last thing I said to Michael Crothers [former managing director of Shell] was, ‘What about the police alcohol?’ And he said, ‘I’ll work on that’ and Julia Busby [head of legal at Shell] tugged his sleeve, sitting beside him and said, ‘Well, maybe, we’ll see.’ You were at that meeting.”

Fitzgibbon: “I was yeah.”

Kane: “You were in the Burlington Hotel when he had a resume of the previous meeting and, immediately, on the floor he put 185K. And the first words out of my mouth was, after the 185K, was what about the money for police alcohol? He said, ‘I cannot, that’s for everything.’ he said. ‘I cannot compartmentalise the alcohol’ [has difficulty pronouncing the word compartmentalise]. I can never say the word. ‘I cannot com-part-ment-alise the alcohol, that is for everything, that is our offer’. We went into an anteroom and talked for a few minutes, we came back then to their room in the Burlington Hotel and we refused the offer but what was left on the table was that an opinion was going to be got, sought from KPMG and that would be that the deciding factor. You have also got the knowledge in your head that KPMG went to John McNaulty’s…”

Fitzgibbon: “John McNally’s office.”

Kane: John McNally’s office and had a two-and-a half hour meeting with him in which the alcohol was also openly discussed. There was three occasions there where police alcohol was discussed prior to me writing out the invoice out to Corrib and we need that back-up for the for the company secretary Brandjes. We need that back up.”

Fitzgibbon: “So what is it that you need?”

Kane: “I need you to confirm that you were present when supply of alcohol to police was openly discussed in London, Dublin. You can’t, you can’t confirm John McNally’s…”

Fitzgibbon: “Well, have you spoken to John?”

Kane: “No, I have not spoken to John.”

Fitzgibbon: “Do you intend to?”

Kane: “John phoned me in my kitchen in London and told me, because I nearly shit my underpants, that that man spent the best part of the conversation, saying your client had better be very careful because prison could be a real possibility here because of the police alcohol.”

Fitzgibbon: “Okay.”

Kane: “Do not know that?”

Fitzgibbon: “Well I know, I know that the the person from KPMG spoke in an alarming way

Kane: “Correct.”

Fitzgibbon: “About what the risks for you vis-a-vis the Revenue in all of this. My understanding was not that it was because of the alcohol, it was because some of the can of worms that might open for you

Kane: “Yeah and the hidden..”

Fitzgibbon: “And this is not something that should have come as a surprise to you. You and I had discussed that from the very first time that we met about this, that there was a kind of Pandoras box that you wouldn’t want to open with the Revenue. Nor would they by the way but the guy from KPMG, was it KPMG?”

Kane: “It was, Liam Grimes”

Rooney: “Same name.”

Fitzgibbon: “Was obviously instructed to or decided to, his approach was to make the most of that, to try to worry you into…”

Kane: “Absolutely, absolutely… so what we are really saying is that while Neil Rooney and Desmond Kane spout loads about, talking about police alcohol there is nobody of any credibility because we’re seen as as liars in the Irish press, by GSOC and all the rest of it. We’ll come to that in a minute. We need your solid back up to let Brandjes know…”

Fitzgibbon: “Okay”

Kane: “That it was openly discussed.”

Fitzgibbon: “First of all yes I was at the meeting I think it was 8th or 9th of March 2012?”

Kane: “The 9th of March, 2012.”

Fitzgibbon: “Yes I was at the meeting in the Burlington and I was definitely at the mediation.”

Kane: “Yes.”

Fitzgibbon: “And I engaged in lots of discussions with various people at Shell and their representatives about all of this. There’s a couple of things that come to mind and I’ll agree – I will look at my file, which is most important, its the place I’ve got to go because I do have notes. All right? So I’ll consult my notes and I will prepare something.”

Kane: “Can I say, we’re friends in this room. Can I say that I rung you about this one day and we had a good long chat for about half an hour and you said to me that that’s the way I see it that’s the way that I recall it, there was alcohol discussed, police supplied alcohol.”

Fitzgibbon: “I want to be very careful about this.”

Kane: “I understand.”

Fitzgibbon: “One is yes there was, there were references made to the alcohol. I’m happy to confirm in the London meeting and indeed at the other, the next meeting.”

Kane: “Burlington.”

Fitzgibbon: “But I don’t want to make, say to you now what those references were without consulting my notes because the context is very important.”

Kane: “Well it was very clear to us all, the three of us in the party, back in the Burlington Hotel, that the 185 was to encompass everything and what he clearly meant was it gets the alcohol out of the way in the 185.”

Fitzgibbon: ‘Okay, well that’s something I need to…”

Kane: “Yeah.”

Fitzgibbon: “I need to see if that’s in my notes okay.”

Rooney: “Also the falsification of invoices that he was surprised to hear about at the London meeting.”

Fitzgibbon: “But there some lessons, sorry I was just going to say, we’ve got to be careful. The meeting in London. Those meetings, I think, I don’t think they could be described as off the record okay? That’s my memory of my view of them. Nobody said, ‘these are off the record meetings’. So, cause I have to consider, am I at liberty to say anything about it so we just need to think about that aswell but I think it’s okay. The mediation was bound by the terms of the mediation agreement which included confidentiality so I’m not at liberty to disclose what was said at the mediation meeting. You’re probably going to say to me that it doesn’t matter because what I what I think your view of that is that the alcohol wasn’t really talked about at the mediation..”

Kane: “No.”

Fitzgibbon: “It may have been mentioned but it wasn’t, it, my memory is that it didn’t form part of the agreement.”

Kane: “No, not at all…”

Fitzgibbon: “And perhaps from Shell’s point of view they wouldn’t be where they are now with you if they had included it, okay?”

Kane: “Yeah.”

Fitzgibbon: “But what the mediation did do is settle your money claim…”

Kane: “Yeah.”

Fitzgibbon: “…based on the proceedings we issued.”

Kane: “Yeah.”

Fitzgibbon: “And I need to check my file, to be honest, to see if the proceedings included the alcohol. I think it probably did actually, a reference to monies being owed for the alcohol. Have you shown the proceedings to the people at Shell? Have you shown that, so we need to check this, have you any copy of the proceedings? You are entitled to them. Like the proceedings may have said about the alcohol. Certainly, there are letters from me to Shell, aren’t there? Before the proceedings…

Kane: “You mean the Sligo Bannister piece? The first piece we paid for we put together?

Fitzgibbon: “Yeah”

Kane: “Yeah, yeah we spoke about the alcohol.”

Fitzgibbon: “The point being that it sounds like what you’re trying to establish with this person…”

Kane: “Michiel Brandjes”

Fitzgibbon: “You had the opportunity to talk to is, there is a reality to your claim about the alcohol. He is looking for something. This wouldn’t be new evidence because he will have seen it before so… but there is paperwork to reflect the fact that you have made this claim including, I think, the proceedings and certainly the letters. But look, I’ll give you copies of anything you want but the proceedings. So what I will do is…”

Kane: “If you’re free to make those assertions then I think we’ll keep it simple and we say, ‘I was in London when alcohol…’.”

Fitzgibbon: “In what, in what manner am I being asked to make these assertions?”

Kane: “For us, to back up what we are saying to Brandjes. That the alcohol was openly discussed in London, Dublin and then by KP [MG]… you can’t confirm that but?”

Fitzgibbon: “No, I can’t.”

Kane: “The KPMG down in John’s office that…you know, it was mentioned… John phoned me and spoke to me about that and highlighted the fact that he’s saying, I mean he’s saying, “Police alcohol? Come on Des” you know?’

Fitzgibbon: ‘I may, I may, like I certainly think I’d be able to say, fairly say, that you that you made claims that you were owed, that you supplied the alcohol to the Gardai at the request of Shell and you went into some detail about how you were requested to do it, what you had to do to get it. You named Gardai, you identified individuals and locations and how you, where you got it – you made these claims and you claimed that you weren’t paid for it by Shell so that seems… that’s what you said.”

Kane: “Yeah.”

Fitzgibbon: “Now the bit that I need to check my notes on are, on what they said about it, I think that’s what you’re at.”

Kane: “We were folding up papers in the room and my last words to Michael Crothers were, “And Michael what about the police alcohol?”. And he said, “I’ll work on it”. “I’ll work on it” or “I’ll find a way” and Julia [Busby] went, sitting beside him, “Well maybe” and, you know, we all went, yeah, the carefulness of the legal person.”

Fitzgibbon: “But she was, she was, on a number of occasions, she qualified..”

Kane: “Yeah.”

Fitzgibbon: “Some of the things you said by saying that and of course there’s no admission, this is whatever.”

Kane: “Yeah. You see what Shell are saying is the first thing they knew about alcohol, in any shape or form, was when I produced the invoice after the mediation payment.”

Fitzgibbon: “But they can’t say that because…”

Kane: “But they are saying that.”

Fitzgibbon: “But, did you not put out… you should have copied the letter I sent two years before that, saying, saying it…”

Kane: “They don’t reply to anything.”

Fitzgibbon: “You should have showed it to them. They can’t deny that. I mean that’s just another thing I think you should consider.”

Kane: “And this is what they’re telling the GSOC. That, out of the blue, we opened an envelope one morning and there was this bill for alcohol, we went ‘what’s this? we don’t know anything about it’”

Fitzgibbon: “Okay I’ll have a look at my file and I’ll give you.”

Kane: “Michael Crothers is a dreadful liar. Michael Crothers is a lovely big Canadian man who sat in that office and showed us lots of comfort. We have since met him in the hotel along the quays there, it used to be the Stackish Hotel out beside the Lewis [Luas?] in Portobello. We’ve since met him in there with another man.”

Fitzgibbon: “Oh yeah, the Hilton, the Conrad.”

Kane: “Yes, the Conrad Hilton where another man had been sent to hear it all. I mean you weren’t privy to it. We addressed the AGM again last year and the man said I will send a mediator. He sent this man..”

Fitzgibbon: “And what did Crothers say when he met you?”

Kane: “He said, you know, we really don’t know where you are coming from, we don’t know anything about police alcohol, we don’t know anything about [redacted]’s tennis courts – this is what he said. He’s looking at the picture of a tennis court, all lined out in a garden and he said it was actually a lorry park for heavy lorries and I said, ‘With tiny gates, Michael?’ “

Fitzgibbon: “What are you owed in respect of [redacted]’s tennis courts?”

Kane: “What are we owed?”

Fitzgibbon: “Yeah.”

Kane: “Financially?”

Fitzgibbon: “Cant be of anything?”

Kane: “Well if the new BVB, hold on now, if the new BVB, his name is BVB the CEO [of Shell] Ben van Beurden has said ‘setting aside any previous commercial agreement’, he said it with his own words and it’s recorded. ‘We will have a meeting and if you have got anything new or if you can prove some of the things you’re very fond of saying, then we will look at it.’ Then the Chairman interrupted and said, ‘Mr Kane we don’t want you back next year, we want a happy conclusion, you’ve heard it from Ben’.”

Fitzgibbon: “But like, and again it’s just assistance, or something to think about. Like the mediation settlement, and I don’t have it here, basically settles your financial claim.”

Kane: “Yeah.”

Fitzgibbon: “Full and final. You can’t be revisit it.”

Kane: “Yeah.”

Fitzgibbon: “You got paid a sum of money in respect of the claims and the proceedings.”

Kane: “Right, right.”

Fitzgibbon: “So they disposed of it so you couldn’t sue Shell, you couldn’t, you can’t pursue them for any money.”

Kane: “But this is business afterwards. This invoice wasn’t dated prior to the mediation. This invoice was dated after the mediation as was an invoice for seven and a half grand to pack up and transport the goods which they paid. So there was business after that which was paid. They continued a business relationship with us after that and we raised the alcohol thing because they hadn’t. You’re stating even here that they hadn’t dealt with the alcohol as a specific item in the mediation.”

Fitzgibbon: “No, no I’m not stating that, no.”

Kane: “They haven’t.”

Fitzgibbon: “I’m not stating that. I said I couldn’t recollect. I hope you’re not recording this conversation? Either of you. Is that, is that off? Why is a red light flashing?”

Kane: “Because, because there’s a text.”

Fitzgibbon: “In fairness, you know.”

Kane: “A story from my wife.”

Fitzgibbon: “Okay. Gotcha. Okay.”

Rooney: “Check up where you are.”

Fitzgibbon: “No but but people are increasingly recording conversations and we have to be very careful but whether you’re recording or not, in fact I don’t mind if you are to be honest, because I didn’t, what i’m saying is, and I’m not trying to be difficult Desmond because I, I appreciate where this could go and I have a professional reputation here and obligations as a solicitor and I would be absolutely honest and truthful about everything.”

Kane: “Well to my mind that makes it easy for you then because you were there.”

Fitzgibbon: “Absolutely, yeah.”

Kane: “And we did talk alcohol.”

Fitzgibbon: “Yeah.”

Kane: “And we did talk alcohol and..”

Rooney: “But you need to check your notes.”

Fitzgibbon: “I have to rely on and I really made some good notes on it you know its hard when you don’t have an assistant to make notes when you are doing a lot of talking as well but you know I do recall and I have no hesitation in saying I do recall that in both meetings you introduced, you brought the attention of the meeting to the alcohol claim and in mediation I can’t recall because of so many discussions in the room and outside the room. But my recollection is there was a kind of a gap in the agreement, from their point of view, in that it doesn’t cover off the alcohol.”

Kane: “Yeah.”

Fitzgibbon: “But I’m trying to make sure that you understand is that…”

Kane: “And also you were surprised that they did not silence us at the meeting?”

Fitzgibbon: “Yeah, they didn’t gag you.”

Kane: “They didn’t gag us.”

Fitzgibbon: “Yeah, mediation is a confidential process so you can’t talk about what happened at it.”

Kane: “No.”

Fitzgibbon: “Or, or… but I think they left themselves…”

Kane: “Wide open.”

Fitzgibbon: “They missed it yeah, yeah, yeah. They’re not able to turn around and injunct you in the High Court on the basis that you agreed not to talk about any of this. A big mistake on their part I think.”

Kane: “Yeah.”

Fitzgibbon: “They should have guessed that was a risk.”

Kane: “Well what we have planned, we’re planning to go from here with what we’ve just asked you. And we know we’ll get confirmation from you because you’ll check your notes and you will not be able to deny that alcohol was a mystery in both meetings, it was never mentioned because, as I say, it was mentioned. It was highlighted by me both times, especially when he offered the 185 in the bundle and the first words out of my mouth, we looked at each other, and I said, ‘Michael, what about the alcohol? It was 43 grand alone’, and he said, ‘No, that encompasses everything and then he used that word I can’t say [compartmentalise] and you were there on the stairs saying what did he mean saying ‘comp-art-ment-alise’ and you said…”

Fitzgibbon: “But was that, was that ‘encompassing everything’, did that mean the 185 includes the alcohol?”

Kane: “Yes, but never, not as an item.”

Fitzgibbon: “We can’t mention.”

Kane: “I’m giving you 185 to shut you up about everything.”

Fitzgibbon: “And that includes the the alcohol.”

Kane: “Yeah, but now the alcohol doesn’t exist and they don’t know anything about it — that’s the lie that’s going about.”

Fitzgibbon: “Yeah, well, one of the things, again, one of the things you might do is, in terms of what, I’m trying to pick up what they are at now and they might say, ‘well, he comes in and says we discussed, and the solicitor says we’ve discussed it at the various meetings, right’?

Kane: “Yeah.”

Fitzgibbon: “And then the thing gets settled at a mediation. That might, here’s something to think about, that might help their argument, that it was included in that settlement because it was something that was on the table. Now the invoice post-dates, I know that, oddly post-dates, I mean you raised it after the mediation but you would have thought if it was a claim, if it was owing, if it was something you were owed, then you should have raised it before.”

Kane: “Yeah”

Fitzgibbon: “And they might say well…”

Kane: “But it wasn’t to be raised, it wasn’t to be an invoice, it was to be, we were to be advised of how to bill them for the alcohol and that’s what was missing.”

Fitzgibbon: “Yeah well you were being reimbursed really, weren’t you, were you?”

Kane: “For the alcohol?”

Fitzgibbon: “Yeah.”

Kane: “Well in 2005 and 2006 they called it boots and hats and paid it.”

Fitzgibbon: “Yeah.”

Kane: “In 2007, they…”

Fitzgibbon: “We’re back to this thing about whether it was services, which would be a tax [inaudible] of goods, and all that.”

Kane: “Now what we want to do with Ben van Beurden and Michiel Brandjes is we want to say to them we have got the confirmation that’s required, we have got other items of evidence for them. Like they didn’t believe us that 890,000 pounds, euros was spent on a house down there, valued at 150,000 pounds, now we’ve got all those invoices. A [redacted] down there called [redacted] house had 890,000 euros of invoices booked out to it. We have them all – every one of them.”

Fitzgibbon: “Your invoices, from whom to whom?”

Kane: “From us to Shell, later transferred to Roadbridge.”

Fitzgibbon: “Okay, these were invoices we saw at the time.”

Kane: “Yes, the 21 that were on..”

Fitzgibbon: “But they’ve been settled, you’ve been paid for those?”

Kane: “Yes but we’ve proving the culture of what we were being asked to do by Shell. We’re not disputing the invoices, or any of the, we’re not looking for that now. We’re telling them this was the culture.”

Fitzgibbon: “You accept that you’ve been paid?”

Kane: “Yes and we’ve illustrating to him the culture that led to us being instructed for the alcohol in the same manner… the culture exists..”

Fitzgibbon: “The modus operandi, yes.”

Kane: “Of how things were happening. Then in Broadhaven Bay [Mayo], in June 2010, they hold a meeting.”

Fitzgibbon: “Yeah.”

Kane: “Which Crothers, at the London meeting, went ape he threw it down across the lady, the Dutch lady, and went, ‘How can you say that when we’ve got these minuted meetings?’”

Fitzgibbon: “Yeah.”

Kane: “Saying we held a minuted meeting, we discussed falsified invoices. It was agreed that Mr Kane and Mr Rooney’s OSSL were owed the money because the goods were actually kitchens, bathrooms, things like that.”

Rooney: “And you might have put that in your notes as well, cause you were there?”

Kane: “Right, so I haven’t finished what I’m saying. So what we want to do to Brandjes and to BVB, and to let Michael Crothers know as well, we want to say we’re not going to give up exposing the five cops involved. Five cops are saying – three of them are saying that we weren’t in Belmullet offloading alcohol, one of them a chief super who actually offloaded the alcohol – boxes, boxes, boxes, right? He did that, he’s gone silent, he hasn’t replied to 800 emails and he’s told the GSOC that he doesn’t know what we are talking about. And the other man I personally met in Athlone with a van full of booze and put it into his car was a man called Liam Grimes. He has also denied that it happened. Also we are led to believe by GSOC, now, so there’s two men, very senior men in the gardai, telling a blatant lie.”

Kane: “Well they found that there was no evidence of the alcohol, not that there was no alcohol. They found that there was no evidence.”

Fitzgibbon: “Did they interview everybody?”

Kane: “We don’t know.”

Fitzgibbon: “Did they interview you?”

Rooney: “In a public announcement they said that they shared, they spoke with us and then spoke with the guards and shared with the guards what was said with us.

Kane: “They took detailed statements from the guards and went back to the complainants – that’s us – and reviewed the correspondence with the complainants. They didn’t…”

Rooney: “They didn’t do that.”

Kane: “They never came back to us at all.”

Rooney: “In fact they ripped our statement up in front of us.”

Kane: “They tore our statements up, the GSOC, on the table in front of us and their officers.”

Fitzgibbon: “So this is the [Garda] Ombudsman?”

Kane: “The Ombudsman, yes. It’s a joke, it’s a whitewash joke.”

Fitzgibbon: “We’ve seen a lot about it in the media. Unfortunately it seems to be…”

Kane: “So we’ve pressing hard against the lying policeman. We’re pressing hard with Shell and the Minister for Justice right now but what we want to say to Brandjes and to Michael Crothers and Ben van Beurden is that we will stop immediately if we get mediation on this matter and polygraph tests. We will take lie detector tests as to whether I was on the Athlone bypass meeting a policeman who said it never happened. And he will take a polygraph as to whether he was in Belmullet police station meeting John, Chief Superintendent John Gilligan and offloading copious amounts of alcohol. And will they, will they take the lie detector test?

Rooney: [Inaudible] There’s a few companies in Dublin who’d do it.”

Kane: “Right, well let’s get out there.”

Fitzgibbon: “And what about, what about…what is your objective?”

Kane: “We want the rest of the money. We want to show Brandjes, we want to show Brandjes that we were wronged. Marc, forget the fucking money, we lost our jobs. We lost all involvement on the Corrib. There’s people up there making millions in our business right now.”

Fitzgibbon: “Yeah but, so okay, but tell me what it is you want.”

Kane: “We want original money back. If they want to still not talk about alcohol we want, we want the devalued amount that they paid for the stock reinstated to the amount it should have been.”

Fitzgibbon: “So how much is the alcohol?”

Kane: “The alcohol was 43 grand and the missing money is 208, the alcohol was 43,000.”

Fitzgibbon: “What, the 208 relates to…?”

Kane: “What we think was the shortfall, if BVB is setting aside all earlier commercial decisions, which was August the 12th.”

Fitzgibbon: “Well, how do you know it was August the 12th? Did he say meaning August 12th?”

Kane: “All, all previous…”

Fitzgibbon: “But did he specifically say…”

Kane: “No, all previous commercial decisions, setting them aside, he said, we will speak with you. Now they’ve gone very cold and I’ll tell you why they’ve gone very cold since because they were waiting on the GSOC report coming out because Crothers knew that was coming soon.”

Fitzgibbon: “They were worried about that.”

Kane: “No, no thought, they’ve had a whitewash.”

Fitzgibbon: “Yeah but they were just making sure it came out right for them. But look, well whatever about the 40 grand like, and again, this mediation agreement is really important in this. Because if it says ‘full and final settlement’ you know that then, you’ve no other basis to seek…”

Rooney: “What about me?”

Fitzgibbon: “Well I wasn’t acting for you.”

Rooney: “Yeah I know.”

Talk over each other

Fitzgibbon: “What is the statute of limitations? Time limits, 6 years, 6, 7, 6 is 12, 6 and 7 is 13 so you’d be statute barred soon, if not already. So get advice, you had a solicitor. Progress it if you feel you have a claim… but you don’t have it… sorry I’m just this is just coming back into my head. The claim was by yourself Desmond, as sole trader, trading as… you [Rooney] were working for him… you weren’t in business in your own right. That was the advice we gave you… so I don’t think you’d have a claim anyway Neil, to be honest. because he’s owed the money, he [Kane] was the employee.”

Kane: “Marc, we, we feel…”

Fitzgibbon: “But these are some of the, sorry, I know what’s going on but these are some of the fundamental realities.”

Kane: “I understand the fundamental realities and I think that this was perhaps ring-fenced into that happening, what happened there. I think Kane and Rooney are saying, ‘What about the alcohol?’. I think it’s gone beyond the price of some alcohol now. We’re being branded as liars for something we didn’t lie about, we’re telling the truth about. We lost our jobs because of the alcohol. We lost our jobs because we refused to lie about Joe Gannon.”

Fitzgibbon: “But you didn’t have jobs I mean I don’t need to talk to you about this. You were…”

Kane: “We lost our livelihoods.”

Fitzgibbon: “No but you were contractors. If I have a fella building a house for me and I say to him, ‘I don’t want you to build it anymore’, he loses the contract.”

Kane: “There’s a loss here for, because of wrongful dealings…”

Fitzgibbon: “But there has to be a loss that you are entitled, I don’t have to ask you, there has to be a liability.”

Kane: “Yeah.”

Fitzgibbon: “Now that was a liability, there was a liability for monies owing and you got a sum of money and I don’t know if it was enough, or too much, or too little, it doesn’t really matter now. You made a decision on that night to sign up to it. So there was a loss, in my view, they paid that money more, less because of legal risk and more because of, they just wanted the box this thing off right, and I think they walked out of there thinking that was the end of it. And I think that, and this is just me speculating, right? Nobody said this to me, I’ve not spoken to, I’ve told you the only conversation I had with somebody ages ago, I’ve had no other conversation with anyone about this. And I think they take the view that this is somebody who they did a deal with..”

Kane: “Yeah.”

Fitzgibbon: “And he’s coming back for a second bite of the cherry and I think they see it as, just, don’t get annoyed with me, they see it as not playing ball.”

Kane: “Yeah”

Fitzgibbon: “I think that’s the way they see it.”

Kane: “Yeah.”

Fitzgibbon: “Why do I say that? I’m just trying to read between the lines and if they give in to them again, there’s no honour here, he’ll be back again for something else, that’s the way they might see it.”

Kane: “Yeah.”

Fitzgibbon: “It sounds like I’m saying [inaudible] but…”

Kane: “You’re saying it sounds like this, it sounds like that, it does sound like that to us but I’m prepared to put that to one side. I am telling you it’s different from that. They…you’re saying to me that you don’t work for them so how could you lose your job… a man comes in to you who’s been contracting for you for 10 years and tells you that you will tell a lie and falsify a police statement to protect a man called Joe Gannon or you’ll not be here any longer and, within three years, you’re whittled down and gone. You’ve not got any business except for toilet paper and you’re watching all your stuff coming from other companies and it’s because you refused to lie about a man called Joe Gannon. Now GSOC and co and the police and the Minister for Justice have quashed the Joe Gannon thing. It’s gone silent, nobody wants to talk about it but we are the ones that were made to falsify a statement regarding Joe Gannon, and made by Shell. We have got, I know that our biggest weapon is this hateful talk and bad stuff for Shell, and bad publicity, and I know that’s our biggest weapon but there was also hurt and financial loss to us, not as an employee but as a company. They made us do things for them, we have to prove the culture to the new chairman and we have to let him know that that’s how we were handling things for them and lots of things that have come out since that they’ve relied on, for their evidence, are untruthful…. [Redacted], who got cars for himself and billed them to Roadbridge through us, is still sitting there as the chief contracts manager and when he was approached by Frances van Dam to tell the truth he went, ‘OSSL ? Special instructions? Don’t know anything about it.’ A lie of the highest proportions. He had actually made the instructions. He stood in our office and made us falsify invoices for his house getting plastered, for forestry equipment for his house, for engines for his car, for his wife, and and put them into bills for Roadbridge. He made us do all that. When approached by Van Dam, of course Van Dam wasn’t told anything by us, to just confirm that OSSL were the special company to go to for favours, he went, ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about’ and that sunk us.”

Fitzgibbon: “Desmond, you know I’ve always appreciated why you feel the way you feel about all of this, absolutely appreciate it and I think the accountancy systems we’ve identified, the legal wrong, and we went about sorting that out.

Kane: “Yeah.”

Fitzgibbon: “I still feel that you are in difficulty in terms of legal claims, whatever about moral claims, right, legal claims.”

Kane: “Yeah.”

Fitzgibbon: “For long-term losses for contracts being breached and for employment-type things.”

Kane: “Well what we want is simple, what we want is simple. We want 43 grand for the police booze and we want something back for the stock that he basically stole from us after an 18-hour fucking meeting.”

Rooney: “We were dismissed without.”

Kane: “Well we didn’t work for them.”

Rooney: “Well he said the words, amorally.”

Kane: “Amorally.”

Rooney: “Abruptly, without notice.”

Fitzgibbon: “But that was in the context of a discussion I mean I’m not trying to, sorry, I’m on your side but, you know…”

Kane: Yeah put that aside

Fitzgibbon: “I haven’t thought about this for a year, so it’s only coming back as we’re talking so. Look, look and I’ll always, you know, I’m happy to assist if you want me to but only in so far as there’s a basis for me to do it. I have a difficulty in relation to the mediation agreement because it’s there and it’s signed.”

Kane: “Marc, we’re not really, we know that that’s there, we know that’s a stumbling block for that. But there’s another matter on the table and it’s this. That we are now getting castigated in the Irish press and on the news as liars about police alcohol. We’re not lying, we’re telling the truth. We got a special instruction from Shell… I mean Shell’s.. when you were in London, Crothers dropped a bombshell, do you recall? He told us [redacted] got sacked for a massive abuse…”

Fitzgibbon: “Yeah but that doesn’t amount to a confession that there was alcohol.”

Kane: “I don’t think you’ll even let me finish what I’m saying. That he’s back on Shell’s behalf. Come on, come on. He dropped a bombshell, he had told us he had gone for further education to continue his career within Shell. He even lied to us why he was gone. He was gone because he was using us wrongfully to do favours for hundreds of locals and then the bombshell – police alcohol – that’s why he was gone. And Terry Nolan was gone, the CEO was gone, for coming into this man and telling him if you don’t lie and change that statement you’ll be gone out of here because Joe Gannon is our man and we have to protect him at all costs. Lie about the policeman to the police was our instruction. And we were gone within 36 months of that project. And we had 15 years to go. We were a preferred supplier for the next 15 years. Now I know we had no contract, no nothing but I’m telling you thats the facts. We want simple small money now – we want 43 grand and 208 grand. And we’re here to ask you about this polygraph thing – is it a flyer? Does it work? Does it happen? Have you ever heard of mediation with polygraphs?”

Fitzgibbon: “No.”

Kane: “No.”

Fitzgibbon: “I don’t do, I have never seen a polygraph machine I don’t think I don’t know how they work. Anyhow, look, I’m sorry its wrong of me to get into Shell’s case I’m sorry I’m just kind of reality testing in some ways, just for myself.”

Kane: “I know that as well.”

Fitzgibbon: “So, apologies. I don’t mean to…”

Kane: “No, no, no.”

Fitzgibbon: “I know how you feel about it, both of you, and like, in fairness, it’s something that’s obviously of huge significance to you because you’re pursued it and you’re continuing to pursue it.”

Talk over each other

Kane: “We worked with your Sligo man, we worked with you, the trail went cold. For 18 months you and I didn’t even speak. We went and stood outside Shell for a week and Crothers had us in and, within a month, you were in London. Within a month of that, here in Dublin, and within a month of that we were down in the quays. You take 60 grand, John gets 11 grand – all done, lovely. That was because we kept on with our hearts on our chest. We said this is a problem for you. Now we’ve restarted again with the policemen, the lying policeman. We’ve been round at Shell all morning with banners, about the lying policeman, we’re starting again. But if we want to talk, the talk is this: mediate this problem gone and we will take polygraph tests to tell them that we are telling the truth. They sent policemen to meet us, we did not make those arrangements. The policemen we went to give the first statement to said to us, and we looked into his eyes and we felt stupid, because he said to me, ‘So when you arranged with Grimes to meet me on the Athlone bypass, you know, what was the arrangement?’ And we went, ‘No, we didn’t arrange to meet Grimes, we were told to go and meet Grimes.’ He said, “So, who arranged Grimes to go.’ And we went, ‘Jesus Christ you’ve hit the nail on the head. Who sent Grimes to meet me? That’s the key to the thing.’ OSSL didn’t organise that. OSSL went and bought the booze. OSSL had a big store of booze in their place, they were whittling away at it, and then they sent most of it to Bellmullet but they sent me to meet a man on the Athlone bypass called Liam Grimes. They made the arrangement with Liam Grimes, nobody else, they had the power to say to a policeman, ‘Make your way to the Athlone bypass because I’ve got a consignment of booze for you’ and he’s there, jack the lad’s there, he doesn’t know anything now. That journey is a fictitious thing in my head. It’s not, it’s a fact and he was in Belmullet Police Station.”

Fitzgibbon: “Doing the devil’s advocate now. Surely the guy in GSOC investigating this, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. He did interview Grimes, Grimes said it never happened, the guy told a huge lie, it never happened. Put it into my statement this never happened, they’re lying.”

Kane: “Well we’re never going to be privy to that. We’ve asked GSOC, when we were at meeting three with GSOC, they were asking us about, they tore up our statements. They said your statements are shit, threw then around the table in four pieces.”

Rooney: “The statements were taken by Sergeant Murphy.”

Kane: “In his handwriting, it was was torn up with our signatures, threw them down, we were getting them off Murphy so we’re told. Right so they’re lying there.”

Fitzgibbon: “Where can you get them?”

Kane: “Off the Murphy who wrote them originally. He would have the copies. So he threw them down there and he says to us, GSOC, ‘This is shit, you’ll never nail the bastards with this’ and we said, ‘Let’s stop you there’ – two guys, we don’t know the other guy’s name. One of them is called Johan Groenewald – ‘We’re not hear to nail any bastards – we’re here to tell you there’s a problem and the police could have come forward and helped us get our money but they refused to do so. We sent a chief super 800 emails that he never replied to. Not even to say, ‘fuck off Kane, I don’t know what you’re talking about’. Why didn’t he do that!’ So he said you have got to write a novel and you have got to start with the washing machines and the tellies for the residents because then we can prove the culture of corruption.”

Fitzgibbon: “Okay”

Rooney: “You mention somebody’s name, you have to go into all the details of how you’ve met them, what your relationship was..”

Kane: “No, we told them to fuck off. We told them to fuck off. We said, ‘you’ve got your statements there, that’s the statement we’re making, that’s what happened.” He’s in Belmullet Police Station, I’m on the Athlone bypass. It happened. They’re only interested, I’m not interested in crucifying [redacted] for getting her washing machine..”

Fitzgibbon: “But did they explain how the GSOC process works. To be honest with you I don’t know because we don’t get involved in that stuff but.”

Kane: “Well I don’t know either but it’s just a cover-up and then the findings are secret.”

Rooney: “And they can’t investigate anybody higher than them.”

Fitzgibbon: “Okay, and can they appeal? Is there an appeal, there isn’t obviously. And what are you doing with the Minister for Justice. Are you writing..?”

Kane: “Daily to her.”

Fitzgibbon: “And getting nothing?”

Kane: “She said she couldn’t speak until after the GSOC conclusion so its concluded a week ago so we’re saying where’s the meeting now?”

Fitzgibbon: “Have you tried talking to any politicians?”

Kane: “Clare Daly has raised it a couple of times in the Dáil.”

Fitzgibbon: “Has she been sympathetic?”

Kane: “Yeah, she knows what they’re like. She knows what’s going on down there.”

Fitzgibbon: “Has she given you any advice?”

Kane: “No.”

Fitzgibbon: “It’s very difficult. Like, in a way, a lot of this is when you put your hand up to be counted and tell the truth against institutions and organisations you quite often can’t win.”

Kane: “Yeah.”

Fitzgibbon: “I mean I’ve seen it on others sides and seen people lose their jobs, I’ve seen people end up, you know..”

Kane: “You’re looking at it”

Fitzgibbon: “The fall guys.”

Kane: “You’re looking at it.”

Fitzgibbon: “But, what I’m trying to say is, you’re not the only ones.”

Kane: “No, I know that.”

Fitzgibbon: “There’s many of them, many of them and we saw in the media, you know, after Christmas with the Garda thing and all that stuff – [former Garda John] Wilson wasn’t it? And [Sgt Maurice] McCabe. They prevailed in the end to some extent, didn’t they.”

Kane: “Or have they? I mean they’ll get them in the long grass won’t they?”

Fitzgibbon: “They will. And one of them ended up with cancer [John Wilson] so, I suppose, that’s just a comment on the futility sometimes on these things you know.”

Kane: “Well, for today’s purposes, Marc, we’ve come along…”

Fitzgibbon: “Today’s purposes..”

Kane: “We need the confirmation that we were discussing alcohol in London and in Dublin your man said, well you’re checking your notes, the man said 185 and it had to encompass everything and the first words out of my mouth, the three of us were sitting together on this side of the table, were, ‘What about the alcohol, Michael – the police alcohol?’ No, he said, that is to encompass everything and then he used that c word that I can’t pronounce [compartmentalise] which meant that he was not going to put the alcohol in there in a box, saying ‘boots, hats, gloves, alcohol’. [Inaudible].

Fitzgibbon: “But does that not mean it was lumped into the ultimate settlement, arguably?”

Kane: “We, no, we refused the offer.”

Fitzgibbon: “On that occasion.”

Kane: “Yeah and the alcohol was never brought again.”

Fitzgibbon: “I agree with that, I tend to agree with that. OK, I need to look at my file, I need to provide you with copies of the letters that we sent, I mean, we may as well do it. There were various letters. I’ll provide you with copies of all of the letters. I’ll provide you with my notes, copies of my notes.

Kane: “No Marc, can you not just, can I not ask you five questions on an email and you can consider them and you can come back with… I think we want to keep this simple. I think BVB and…”

Fitzgibbon: “Okay, send me the questions but I want to be very careful because this could end up in a tribunal.”

Kane: “I want you be very careful.”

Fitzgibbon: “And I want to be very careful.”

Kane: “But I want to tell you something – we are in the mix again we are out on the street again – that brought the last bit of success. We’re out in the street and we’re gonna we’re gonna, Crothers is saying, ‘Mr Kane’s behaviour might change now after GSOC’. He said, in the Mayo press, because my staff and some of the locals are getting upset , well fuck me, Michael, you think they’re upset. What about us.”

“If the invoice is fictitious and the related OSSL allegations false, OSSL directors would by now have been arrested and charged for forging a VAT invoice and using it in an attempt to blackmail its former client, Shell EP Ireland.”

also the invoice was drawn up after there legal clashes with OSSL and Shell, I’d say OSSL were in serious Ass Covering mode right about then. I’d assure the amount of details was intentional…

To a certain extent that’s true. If you want to deny something is owing then you have to legally deny the specific aspects which did not form a part of the agreed contract, makes sense then for vendor to spell out what the services rendered were. Clever

+1 BS. Keep highlighting what any thinking person suspected/knew already about that damn gombeen project.
All it would have taken would have been proper consultation with the locals at the start, instead shelll went Full Nigeria on their ass with very sinister extra-state ‘security’, and suddenly flammable local fishing boats.

Accepting gifts illegally is not minor. The Gardai have to be not only perfectly law-abiding, but they also have to be perceived as such. Otherwise the public lose all trust in them, as most of the public have now.

I could’ve done that invoice up in 5 minutes. I’ve never seen an invoice with that level of detail – looks fake.
In years to come people will be scratching their heads as to why we lets some idiots stop us from brings gas ashore for over a decade.

You do understand that any of the gas coming ashore doesn’t necessarily benefit ‘us’, right? Any gas that comes ashore will be the property of Shell and they’ll sell it on the open gas market. We don’t get first dibs on it.

Given that this is the position, it’s not as if we’ve anything, bar a few jobs – not a whole lot – to lose.

Fair point Joe; what I was getting at is that in a hypothetical scenario where suddenly gas comes in short supply, we’re not immediately – as a country – on the pigs back because of the pipeline. You’re probably right – we don’t have to pay the transport costs or whatever, but if Shell own the gas, and there’s somebody willing to pay more for it, then tough titty, Paddy…

I’d have thought gas *was* rather fungible, actually (though I admit, I’ve only looked up that word now!)

Well as far as I know Ivan we can’t export the gas back across the existing interconnectors we have to the mainland but I stand to be corrected on that. The point you make is valid though- the price of gas for consumers is ultimately set on the world market. The thing is if we had a supply crisis again like when Russia shut off supply to several EU countries there a few years ago due to a dispute with Ukraine that’s when it would be handy to have Corrib Gas on our doorstep; it’s as much a security of supply issue as a price one. Also our current and future energy supply is heavily dependent on gas fired backup to variable wind supply until robust forms of energy storage and or the much needed grid improvements are made ( and a possible new interconnector with France is built)

Does anyone really believe this is an actual invoice, and not some propagandist excel sheet thrown together to justify a position?
I deal with plenty of invoices, and have never seen one so detailed and convoluted.
Also, one would imagine the good (or bad depending on your viewpoint) people of OSSL could should be able to spell the word alcohol.

When Sinn Fein get it, all these c**ts will be thrown in jail. Those and all those involved in white collar crime. It’ll be great to watch. But of course that’s the reason the establishment are so afraid. They know real justice will be delivered and ALL criminals from scum who steal handbags to scum who steal billions will see jail time for their crimes. Just like they do in the good ole USA.

Ahh yeah of course the real justice Sinn Fein will bring about ” two young fellas caught smoking a joint where knee capped” “Pedophile knew all the words to Amhrán na bhFiann so was relocated to a job in childcare in the north”.

Plus anybody who is actually working will be paying massive taxes much more than even now. By the way that invoice is total poo. Now that the Bailey and Molloy cases are dealt with showing no conspiracy the Anti Garda hand angers have to find something new. They couldn’t so this poo appears

Shell has acknowledged receipt of the OSSL invoice raised years after the alcohol was supplied. It should be a simple matter for the police or tax authorities to investigate whether the invoice is legitimate.

If it is not legitimate and is being used to demand payment from Shell under false pretences, then OSSL directors should be charged accordingly.

If it is legitimate, then the police officers named on the invoice should be dealt with accordingly.

I cannot understand how five investigations have been carried out – two by the Garda, two by Shell and one thus far by the GSOC – without the legitimacy of the all important invoice being investigated, with one or other of these two possible outcomes emerging.

Either it is fake, in which case OSSL directors should be charged, or it is legitimate, in which case a huge cover-up has clearly taken place in all previous investigations.